The invention relates to a process for operating coking ovens and to an oven for use in such process.
The general type of coking oven used in the invention has a bottom fire box and heat exchangers for the waste gases which are divided in a plurality of parallel channels.
The heat exchangers of this type of coking oven batteries are usually regenerators. However, the invention is applicable also if recuperators are used as heat exchangers instead of the regenerators.
It is already known to divide such coking regenerators into different sections which are fed by individual heating ducts or groups of heating ducts.
It is also known in case of regenerator type horizontal coking ovens to provide the inlet and outlet sections of the different regenerator portions with regulating devices. However, these devices in the prior art had the purpose only to adequately distribute the flowing medium to the individual sections in order, from the point of view of heating technology, to put them to fully effective use.
The layout and arrangement for heating exchangers for coking ovens is usually based on the intended coking time, that is the time which is necessary to complete the coking of the coal introduced into the oven as the feed material. The heating exchangers in these cases are designed in a way that an optimum recovery of the sensible heat in the waste gas is accomplished for a specific coking time. However, frequently a lengthening of the coking time is necessary. This is for instance the case where the production of a coking battery must be throttled down or one oven of the battery of ovens is shut off. A lengthening of the coking time, unfortunately, has the consequence that the waste gas temperature at the outlet of the heat exchanger is reduced to a level below the acceptable temperature limit. To avoid this conflict it was necessary in the prior art to adjust the heat exchanger to higher waste gas temperatures than would have been desirable for optimum use, that is, one had to accept more or less large losses of heat in case of normal coking time.
The invention therefore has the object to provide for a process and product which makes it possible to obtain a substantially equally favorable utilization of the waste gas heat at different coking times.